Bobby's Beginnings
by LanceIsHot
Summary: Not exactly a new recuit fic, cuz it's just Bobby, but the others will be in it soon. It's the beginning of Bobby (if the title didn't give you a clue)
1. The hanging

**Hey everyone! Little one-shot here. We're going back in time to when the new recruits were coming in, I would have written it then, but I like to be a bit behind the crowds. Anyways, I was reading a story that mentioned Bobby's recruitment, but it didn't go into any detail. So, I made up my own, and just telling you now, it may be totally AU, because I've only read 2 comics.. Hope you like it, R&R please!**

Bobby had a normal life. He went to a normal school, had a normal girlfriend, and normal friends. If someone told him that in a few weeks, he would befriend a werewolf, a 12-year-old copy machine, a fireworks maker, and a human cannonball, he would have said they were nuts.

"Hey, Bobby, want to go shoot some hoops?" one of his friends asked.

"Nah," Bobby said, "I've got a date with Mandy tonight."

Yes, Bobby's life was perfect. He was going to pick Mandy up, they were going to walk to the theaters, have dinner at the local hamburger joint, and then an ice cream cone. It was going to be a good night, or, so he thought.

The night started out great, the movie was fantastic, the cheeseburgers were…cheap, but still enjoyable, and Bobby hadn't done anything stupid or embarrassing.

It wasn't until they were walking to the ice cream parlor that things turned sour. When two guys 'accidentally' bumped into them, Bobby thought it was okay, it wasn't until they turned around, holding a knife to Mandy's throat that he knew he was in trouble.

"Let go of her!" Bobby yelled, to which they laughed.

"What are you going to do about it?" the one who wasn't holding the knife to Mandy's neck was grabbing her purse.

Bobby paused, what was he going to do about it? He had never been a fighter, a fact that he always tried to hide, and he had no idea what to do.

"Doesn't look like he's going to do anything," the other one said.

"Yeah, seems like he's too chicken to save his girlfriend," the first guy said.

"Bobby! Do something!" Mandy screamed, trying to hold off the knife that was dangerously close to her neck.

Bobby was furious. Why hadn't he paid attention to that self-defense course in PE? He could probably do something- think of something to do, if it wasn't so cold. So cold…why was he so cold? It was the middle of April.

"Ahhhh!" Mandy screamed. Bobby lunged forward, thinking that the guy was hurting her, but the closer he came, the louder she screamed.

"What's wrong?" he asked, looking around, seeing if there was some other unspeakable terror around. But he didn't see anything, until he looked down at his hand.

"What the heck…?" Bobby yelled, looking at his arm in horror. It was completely transparent; it looked like it was made of ice.

"What…what is that thing?" one of the thugs asked, as he threw down Mandy and ran. The other one was soon to follow him.

Bobby watched them run away; feeling a bit of satisfaction, even though he had no clue what was going on with his body. He reached an icy hand down to help Mandy up, but she looked at him in horror.

"Help!" she screeched, her voice filled with pure terror, as she backed away from him, until she hit the edge of a building.

"He was over here," Bobby heard a voice say from around the corner.

"Young man, why did you drag us all out here?" another voice said.

"You won't believe this," Bobby recognized the voice as one of the thugs, "we were…talking to this guy and this girl, and all of a sudden, he turns into this ice cube!"

"Ice cube, what do you mean?" another voice asked.

"You got to see it to believe it," the first guy said.

By now, Bobby could see a large group of people coming towards him.

'Shoot' he thought to himself. He had to think of something- and fast. He didn't know who was coming, he couldn't see any faces, but he knew from movies that even the kindest people could turn into an angry mob against things they didn't understand.

Suddenly, something inside him told him to stick his arm out. He did so, and by sheer force of will made a huge slide, a slide of what looked like ice. He didn't know how he did it, but he wasn't about to stop and think about it. He hopped on the slide, and started sliding on it.

Unfortunately, he had never been much of a skateboarder, or anything that could give him a sense of balance. He fell off just as quickly as he got on. And the crowd of people wasn't that far behind him.

Bobby was forced to run, looking back every once in a while, and throwing back patches of ice. He didn't have a clue how he did it, and sometimes it didn't work, but every time he threw a patch down, more people slowed down. Sadly, they never seemed to slow down as a whole.

"What is your problem?" Bobby asked. "I was just trying to help Mandy."

Some of the people looked like they weren't as violent, but most of them just ran faster. It had slowed Bobby down to talk, and the people in front were gaining on him.

He was getting tired, this ice making was exhausting. He started to slow down. He started to think that his muscles were on fire, but quickly stopped himself, fire was the last thing one would use to describe him right now.

Suddenly, a boy appeared out of nowhere. He stood in Bobby's path, but he quickly shoved him out of the way, afraid that he was part of the group after him.

"Bobby, wait!" the boy called, running after him.

Bobby looked at the boy, never slowing down, just a quick glance behind him. The boy was tall and thin, and had a pair of odd looking sunglasses.

"What do you want?" Bobby asked as the boy caught up with him.

"Listen, I know what's going on, I'm here to help you," the boy explained.

"Help me? Why would you need to do that? Oh, is it the angry mob behind me that gave you a clue?" Bobby said sarcastically. "What could you do to help?"

The boy grinned. "Watch," he said. He put a hand to his sunglasses, and a beam of light came from his eyes.

Bobby stopped running, but after realizing that he was made entirely of ice right now, he decided he was just as much a freak as this guy, and continued running.

"Hey, the other kids a freak too!" one person said from the crowd.

"Great, now they're after you too- hey! You did help! Now there'll be less people after me," Bobby exclaimed.

The boy gave him a funny look. This didn't seem like the right place to be cracking jokes, not with two dozen people after them.

Bobby started melting; making ice was really tiring, especially since he still didn't know what was happening.

"Hey, shades," Bobby said, panting, "I'm tired, any chance of you being able to get us out of here?"

"There's a plane coming in 10 minutes," the boy said. "We just need to survive until then."

They were both slowing down, the boy didn't look tired, but he was sticking with Bobby.

"Hey man," Bobby said, "you keep going, maybe you can get me out of here, if you get caught, we're both stuck."

"Don't worry," the boy looked like he had an idea. "Okay, start slowing down, and power down, would ya? I'm freezing just standing by you."

Bobby looked at him like he was crazy. "If we slow down, we'll get caught," he pointed out, but he powered down anyways.

"Hey, I know what we're doing," the boy said. "Oh, by the way, I'm Scott, Scott Summers."

By now, the crowd had caught up to them. The two thugs grabbed Bobby, and three other people grabbed Scott. Something in the back of Bobby's mind was telling him that he should be upset that it only took two people to hold him instead of three, but he had bigger things to worry about. Like the fact that he knew half the people in the crowd, a fact that terrified and disgusted him.

Some people had grabbed some rope, and wound it around Bobby's and Scott's wrists, behind their backs. Another person wrapped a different piece or rope on each of their necks, and strung the other end off a limb of a tree.

"Wait a second," one of the thugs stopped them. He walked up to Scott, and ripped the sunglasses off his face. Scott shut his eyes immediately. "Not so tough without your magic sunglasses, are you?" he asked. Obviously, he thought the sunglasses gave Scott his power, because he put them on, and tried to shoot them. "Hey, these don't work!" he exclaimed.

Scott figured out what he was doing. "Here, let me show you how it's done," he said, and opened his eyes.

The beam of lights shot through his eyes again, knocking out everybody near him. It was an incredible blast, destroying everything near them, and probably killing some of the closer people.

Scott wriggled out of the noose around his neck, and after a few seconds, got out of the ropes binding his hands. He helped Bobby out, and said, "Okay, this isn't exactly how I wanted us to first meet. I'm sort of a recruiter for my school, one for people like us. I was sent here to ask you to join."

Bobby thought for a second. Leaving his home, where his mom would probably kick him out, his girlfriend, who was already terrified of him, and his town, where people had tried to hang him.

"What, and leave all this?" Bobby asked. Then he sobered up a bit, he was a clown, but this was no longer funny. He took Scott's outstretched hand. "Let's go," he said. And that was the end of the old Bobby Drake, leaving room for the new him, the Iceman.


	2. The mansion

Flashback: 7 years ago.

Bobby loved the cold, even at a young age; it just refreshed him, made him feel alive. It made him feel like he could do anything. Of course, the fact that he was able to walk around in the freezing weather with nothing more than a light T-shirt worried some people.

"Bobby, get in here right now and put a jacket on!" Bobby's mother screamed at him from the doorway of the house.

"But mom…" 7 year old Bobby complained, "I'm not cold."

"Well I am, mister, so put a jacket on," his mother said.

"How come when you're cold I have to put on a jacket," Bobby asked as he trudged through the snow to his house.

"Because," his mom said, as if that was explanation enough. But right now, nothing could get Bobby upset. It was the first snow of the year, and he and some of his friends were going to the lake and play hockey. Bobby wasn't actually that great, but he was sure he could find some fresh snow to throw at the people playing.

After properly dressing, Bobby grabbed his skates and hockey stick and headed off with a quick goodbye to his mom. "And if you take that jacket off you're in big trouble!" His mom called after him.

Bobby made it to the lake in no time. It was a pretty small town, everything was close together. It wasn't an incredibly small town, where there was nothing to do, but it was small enough to be away from the major cities. It was pretty isolated to; there wasn't another town for miles, which was what Bobby's parents had been aiming for. They didn't like being smashed in one huge city, and were comfortable with the simple life.

"Bobby!" One of his friends called out, "where've you been? The game's started, and we're losing."

Bobby strapped on his ice skates and started on to the ice. He stumbled a bit at first, but soon found how to maneuver on his skates.

"And Bobby," one of the dads who was watching them said, "stay away from the side over there," he pointed to behind one of the trash cans that was serving as a goal, "the ice is thin, we're not sure if it will hold someone."

"Okay," Bobby nodded. Soon, the game was underway. Bobby stayed off to the sides for a bit, trying to figure out how his skates worked. After a couple of minutes, he was getting better, not great, but pretty good for a guy who had only been on the ice a few times.

He swerved around some of the older kids, and tried to get the puck a few times, but was unsuccessful. Suddenly, one of his friends who was on the other side of the rink slid the puck to him.

He stumbled a bit, as he had to rush for the puck, and almost fell on his face. He regained his balance, and started aiming for the goal. Everybody was on the other side of the rink, so he was able to get to the goal fine.

The goalie was no problem, his mask was too big, and he couldn't see that well. He was looking to the opposite side, like he thought the puck was still over there. By the time he noticed Bobby, it was too late.

"Goal!" Bobby shouted, raising his hockey stick in the air.

"Bobby, watch out!" His friends called out. Bobby looked around, wondering why they were yelling at him. Suddenly, he realized that he was skating towards the thin ice.

"Hey guys!" Bobby cried out frantically, "I don't know how to stop!" He finally stopped skating, and fell to his knees, but he was still sliding. He tried to grab something that would make him stop, but the smooth ice was too slippery to grab hold of.

He started to slow to a halt, but by then, he was well onto the thin ice. He lay there for a minute, scared to breathe, as if the slightest of movements could bring him into the icy water. He wasted precious seconds making sure the ice was safe to walk on, and slowly got up.

Instantly, he knew something was wrong. The ice wasn't the nice firm floor he was skating on before. He gasped as he felt, rather than heard the ice crack, and was plunged into the icy lake.

At first, Bobby was freezing, but when he swam to the top for air, he realized how it wasn't that cold. In fact, it was almost refreshing. He ignored the others calls to get out, and started splashing around the water, which had chunks of ice still in it.

"Guys, come in," Bobby called out to the others, "the water's fine."

"Bobby! You're going to freeze in there, get out!" One of the dads called out. Seeing that Bobby wasn't going to come out willingly, he carefully crawled out to where Bobby was, and put his hockey stick in front of Bobby. "Grab the hockey stick, son," he said.

Bobby ignored him, but the longer he stayed in the water, the colder he got. The cool, refreshing feeling was gone, and was replaced by a chilling one that froze him to the bones. He grabbed the hockey stick in front of him, and was pulled out of the water.

He gasped for a few seconds, since it was exhausting to climb out of a hole, and laid on the ice for a few minutes.

"It's not normal," he heard some of the dads talking to each other, "most kids would have frozen by now, or had frostbite, or something. It doesn't make sense."

"Wow, Bobby," some of his friends were congratulating him. "That was awesome."

Bobby soaked up the attention that his friends offered. He wasn't cold anymore, but he was still scared of what happened there. He thought he was shivering more from what just happened, rather than the fact that he was in a frozen river for at least 5 minutes.

Once Bobby's mom had been told about what had happened, she hugged Bobby tightly, almost to the point of suffocation. She swore that he would never be allowed to ice skate again, and thanked his guardian angel for protecting him from the freezing cold for so long.

Present time.

Bobby had never gone on the ice again; he chose to just watch his friends from the sidelines.

'Those are the same friends who just tried to hang me,' Bobby thought. It didn't make sense; he had known most of the people in this town his whole life. And now, they had just tried to kill him.

"Hey, is everything okay?" Scott asked. Bobby ignored him; it didn't seem worth answering.

Of course everything wasn't okay. He had almost been hung; he had a slight bruise on his neck and his wrists from where the ropes had bound him, and he had to leave his home, without saying goodbye to the ones he loved- who probably didn't love him any more.

Scott noticed how quiet Bobby was. He didn't blame him; it must be hard to have everything change so drastically. He knew what he was going through; he had lost his family and the life that he knew in one plane trip.

"If it's any consolation," Scott said, "I know what you're going through."

Bobby continued to ignore him, how could he know what he was going through? Bobby still couldn't believe it, even as they walked to his home, and reached his empty house, and started to pack his things.

"We must have just missed your parents coming out," Scott said, picking up a picture of Bobby and his family that was on the dresser. "We're lucky; it might have been kind of messy if we bumped into them."

There was no doubt that his parents wouldn't have understood what was going on. They hated anything that was different, anything that changed from there ordinary life style. And having a son that could turn into a living ice cube was definitely something they wouldn't accept.

"Okay, I'm done," Bobby said, once he packed up all his stuff. He couldn't bring everything, heck; he couldn't bring half of the stuff he wanted. He could only bring a few of his favorite things, like his clothes, his baseball mitt, and some of his personal stuff. He couldn't bring himself to grab the pictures of his family with him. He thought that they would be too much of a reminder of what he had left.

"Okay, we got to get out to the lake, the plane will be meeting us there," Scott said, putting down the picture.

Bobby nodded, and started after Scott. The lake- he should have known seven years ago what was going to happen.

The fact that he never got cold, how he was able to handle the coldest days without a sweater, how he always had the air conditioner on as high as it could go, it all made sense now.

If only he had known before he had ruined everything.

The plane was an impressive sight to Bobby, who had never been on one before, and he normally would have started asking a million questions about it, but now, he couldn't bring himself to care. To him, it was almost a death sentence, taking him away from the only life he knew.

And the girl inside was the most beautiful girl he had ever seen. He knew she was way out of his league, but the old Bobby still would have hit on her. But he was barely able to lift his head to look at her. He knew she was gorgeous, with her red hair, perfect figure, and her beautiful face, but now her face was etched with worry, and Bobby knew that she knew what had happened.

He noticed Scott and the girl exchange a look, and then the girl nodded, and sat back down in her seat. Bobby thought it was weird how they didn't say anything, but didn't think about it too much. The girl was the pilot of the plane, with Scott as the copilot, and Bobby wasn't sure if he was comfortable with riding in a plane with two kids who didn't look that much older than him.

As if sensing his thoughts, the girl said, "Don't worry, Scott and I both know how to fly the Blackbird, and the professors watching us constantly, he can help if we get in trouble. I'm Jean Grey," she flashed him a winning smile, and turned to her controls.

"_Yes, Bobby, don't be afraid,_" Bobby jumped out of his seat, hitting his head on the ceiling above.

"What was that? That voice, it was in my head!" he screamed, searching for the hidden voice.

"Oh, that's just the Professor," Scott said, as if it didn't matter. "He's a telepath; he can read your mind and stuff. Don't worry; he does it all the time."

Bobby nodded wearily, and sat back down in his seat. "_Don't worry, Bobby,_" the voice said. Bobby perked up after hearing the voice a second time, but wasn't as shocked about the strange voice in his head.

"You'll like it at the institute," Jean said, "you're the first of the new recruits that the Professor's getting. Logan and Storm are out recruiting some others, but everyone else is at the mansion. You'll really like them."

Bobby nodded, and turned to the window, the people he would soon be meeting didn't matter to him. Saying his last goodbye to his home, the fact that he might never see it again- that's what mattered.

After an hour or so in the air, Jean and Scott said that they were there. Bobby had fallen asleep in his seat, trying to forget about all the things that had happened that day, but got up and grabbed his stuff when they woke him.

It had been an almost completely silent trip, Bobby avoided talking to them at all, but every once in a while, Scott or Jean would look at each other and burst out laughing for no reason, making Bobby think that they were both crazy.

He followed the couple through a couple tunnels, and then an elevator, and was led into a huge house. He dropped his bags in shock at the huge house. In a small town like his, there weren't a lot of places that were this big.

Scott laughed at the expression on Bobby's face. "I was that surprised at how huge this place was too," he told Bobby. "Wait until you see the danger room."

"Danger room?" Bobby asked. Scott nodded.

"Yeah, we go in there pretty much every day," he said.

"Why?" Bobby asked.

"Because it's fun," Scott said simply. "Well, unless Logan's in charge, then it's just lethal, but you get used to it." Bobby stared after him in shock, that didn't seem like a fun way to spend the day.

Soon they split up, Scott went one way, and Jean and Bobby went another. She led him up to an empty room. "This is your room, you can just stay here until dinner and unpack," she said, and left the room.

Bobby looked around. It had a single bed in it, a dresser and a desk, and had a door that he figured led to a bathroom. Besides that, it was pretty bare. Not bare, really, just clean, something that his room never really could be called.

Well, his old room, this was his room now. He thought back to earlier that day, but pushed the thoughts out of his head. He didn't want to think about it. This place was weird enough to think about. It was a boarding school in a huge mansion with a jet and a 'danger room' and who knew what else.

He looked out his window, which showed a huge pool. A girl and a boy were in it, another girl was on a chair to the side, and Scott was walking out.

"Evan, I'm warning you, if you hit me with those…things, I'm like, totally going to de-spike you," the girl in the pool was saying. He couldn't make out her features, but she had a ponytail.

"Hey, I can't help it if my spike's hit you if you get in my way," the boy- Evan said.

"You could try aiming," the girl on the side of the pool said. Bobby noticed that she had two white streaks in her hair, which just seemed to suit her face that had a ton of make-up on it.

Suddenly, a monster, or a demon, Bobby wasn't sure what to call it came out. Bobby opened his mouth to scream a warning to the people in the pool, but they saw the demon, and the girl splashed some water on him. He jumped in the pool, splashing the pool, and they all started laughing. They obviously knew this…thing, whatever it was.

Bobby thought about what he had seen so far, they had a jet, a mansion, a danger room where they spent their free time, a guy who could tap into his head, people who laughed out loud for no reason, and they were friends with a demon.

It was official; this place was a nut house.

**R&R please, sorry if Bobby seems OC. **


End file.
